


Love and Hate and Heavy Shit Like That

by jedishampoo



Category: Samurai Champloo
Genre: M/M, a little misogyny from mugen but not too bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-24
Updated: 2007-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:18:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1641041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedishampoo/pseuds/jedishampoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mugen and Jin ponder the difference between love and hate. But not really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love and Hate and Heavy Shit Like That

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta, sharpeslass, who put up with my anime fandoms. I've never written this sort of omniscient POV/narrator thing before, and I wanted it to be offbeat like the show, and so I hope y'all like it.
> 
> Written for Askeveron

 

 

**Love and Hate and Heavy Shit Like That**

"Do you love me?" the woman asked, voice sensual with that after-sex languor.

And she expects an affirmative response, see, because the scene is a romantic one. Let's back up and examine it, shall we? 

It's Edo-period Japan. It's a summer night, it's late, and the moon shines soft white through an open window, and the song of the cicadas drifts lazily into the room. It's an artful little room above a closed tea-shop. In it are a spotless tatami mat, just turned, some carefully-arranged black-lacquer tables, one or two tiny vases with one or two tiny flowers in them, and a flickering oil lamp casting a tasteful golden glow on a futon spread across the floor. On the futon are a man and a woman.

The man is sitting and the woman is lying down. The sheets are twined about her shapely legs, and she's rubbing them against each other with a slow, catlike grace. The woman is worth checking out further: our gaze travels up her legs and we see a pair of super-fine, moon-pale thighs. His come is still on them because they'd just screwed and the man had pulled out because he wanted to pork her but he didn't want to get her pregnant, and women did things like that, got pregnant when you didn't want them to.

We keep looking up, though, like eyes traveling across a lovely painting, and she has great, small, firm tits and a nice neck and pretty face, but her mouth looks all cutesy now, pursed like one of the rosebud-mouths on those creepy little glass-eyed dolls.

"Do you love me?" she'd asked.

"No," Mugen said, for the man was named Mugen. And he was so horrified at the moment that he'd forgotten her name, and she was a little annoying but he'd decided he might still want to screw her again so he added, "Baby." 

"No?" What's-Her-Name cried, her eyes widening in shock. She sat up and shook her silky black hair about her shoulders, and pouted. "You must hate me, then."

"Who said I hated you?" Mugen asked, holding his hands in front of himself in defense.

"It must be love, or it must be hate," she said, pounding her little fist on the tatami floor. It made her boobs jiggle, so Mugen watched them instead of her petulant, little-girl expression. "In all my life, I've discovered that there is nothing in between." She said this like she was sixty or something, and not twenty-one.

"I gotta go," Mugen said, and rolled onto his knees to start looking for his clothes. Because he wanted to get laid but he was tired of dealing with What's-Her-Name's pretentious crap. Love and hate, hate and love. _There's a thin line between love and hate_ , people said and shook their heads like they knew what the hell they were talking about, like love and hate were the only two important feelings in the world, like there was nothing in between, or feelings that had nothing to do with people.

And he didn't feel like arguing with her because he couldn't articulate that thought, and she'd want to turn it into a discussion. She was hot but she was too-- _what's the word?_ \-- earnest. And totally full of shit.

"Don't leave!" the girl said and wrapped her arms around Mugen's waist and planted a kiss on the crack of his ass. Mugen stilled, hopeful again. Because she was totally full of shit but when it came to nookie, she was downright _nasty._

It's time to pull back and look at the scene again, because it's gone all romantic once more. There they are, the moon-and-lamplit room, the tatami mat and flowers and futon with two people on it, and the people are preparing to go at it again like bunnies.

So this romantic scene is what the second man, the samurai, saw when he slid open the door to his lover's room.

"Michiko," he samurai said, because the two hadn't heard him enter. Then he said "hmm."

At his voice the two illicit lovers scrambled apart, the man to grab his sword leaning against the wall and the woman to pull sheets over her naked body.

"Jin!" Michiko cried, for Michiko was her name. And Jin was the name of the samurai.

"Shit," said Mugen, standing and getting a good grip on his sword. 

The men stared at each other for a few moments. Their eyes didn't flicker, and if they recognized each other after four months, they didn't betray it.

"Well, I suppose I'll have to kill you now," said Jin.

"Bring it on," said Mugen, grinning a grin so salacious that most virtuous women and some virtuous men would have fainted at the sight of it, because if there was one thing Mugen liked better than fucking, it was fighting.

"Please, don't! Please! I love you both! I'll kill myself! I can't stand the sight of blood, I can't stand the sight of violence," screamed Michiko, hastily wrapping a yukatta about herself and backing for the door. She threw an arm across her forehead to show just how dramatically she'd meant those words. But no one saw her because she was behind Jin, and he was staring at Mugen, anyway, a strange, slim smile on his lips. And Mugen was staring at Jin, eyes alight.

Michiko slipped out the door, ignored but truthfully not all that put out about it, because she had a remarkably healthy instinct for self-preservation and while she didn't really hate the sight of blood as much as she'd said, she didn't want to be too close when the swords started flying.

"You really wanna fight me, man?" Mugen asked.

"Hmm," said Jin, and with a snikt he freed his sword and started swinging.

Mugen laughed in pure joy and leapt, naked, at Jin. His sword flashed down, glinting in the moonlight, and he was fast, faster and better than he'd been four months ago.

But his astonishing attack connected only with the barest paper-thin edge of Jin's katana as the samurai ducked and deflected the blow. 

"Man, you're even more bad-ass than before," Mugen said. He dropped the floor and balanced himself on one hand and swung the sword with the other, and then a foot right after it.

"So are you," was all Jin said as he deflected the attack on his legs, and his sword was only a blur as he swished it down towards Mugen's shoulder. He missed. The fight continued, fighters moving faster than most people could see, and it was obvious that both these men had been getting some exercise doing things besides porking Michiko for the last four months. And it was obvious that both men were having fun, and that it had been a long time since they'd had this much fun.

More slashes, more ducks, a few real metallic clangs and clashes. The fighters were both just too good, and after a while three swords had gone flying to stick in walls or in Michiko's expensive tatami floor. Then it became a bare-fisted match and Jin was elegant and fast on his feet and he ducked the punches but this was more Mugen's game, because he was at heart a street-fighter. At one point Mugen sort of launched himself like a sumo at Jin, and they both went crashing in a pile to the floor. They rolled around for a bit but they were really too close to land any significant blows, and they were both laughing, so they finally paused for breath.

Jin adjusted his glasses and looked up at Mugen, who was lying atop him like a lover. _Too much like a lover._ Jin started to slide his hand around the floor behind him, hoping to latch onto a sword, any sword.

"Are you aware that you are naked?" Jin asked while he did this.

"I know that. I was getting busy with What's-Her-Face. Michiko."

"Hmm. And are you also aware that you have an erection?"

"Duh, what did I just say?" Mugen knocked away a sword that was lying too close to them, and grabbed Jin's wrists in his fingers, to hold them on the floor. He looked down at Jin with a weird twist on his lips. "So do you."

"I came here to 'get busy' with Michiko," was Jin's excuse. 

These are good excuses, and neither of the men need feel embarrassed. Even though the real reason they are excited is a little more complicated.

"Do _you_ love her, man?" Mugen asked. 

"No."

"Oh. 'Cause I was gonna say, you can have her. She was askin' all that shit. Saying 'you must _hate_ me, then,' and shit like that," Mugen said, in a falsetto that was a fair imitation of Michiko's voice.

"Yes, she's very like that," Jin said.

For Jin also understood that love and hate are not everything, just as the world is not composed of all dark and light colors but mostly shades of in-between. Like Jin's feelings for the naked man, his-- friend, who was still stretched out on top of Jin and holding his hands and who still had a hard-on. Mugen could be-- well, actually, always had been-- a crude, boorish and annoying sort. But Jin was still glad to see him. Too glad, it appeared, for his own erection hadn't quite dissipated, either.

"Ha," Mugen said, and then his face took on a confused look. 

"Well," said Jin, because Mugen still hadn't rolled off of him.

"I'm not a queer, man," Mugen said, as he sort of _pressed_ further into Jin's muscular body beneath him.

"I know," Jin said, and he tried to say it calmly but it came out with a sort of hitched breath as Mugen's erection dug into his own. "You were having sex with my lady-friend."

"Glad we got that straight," Mugen said, and sort of let his face fall forward into Jin's shoulder, to breathe his scent, and was a little sick and pissed at himself because it was a scent he missed, reminding him of a journey that had meant something important despite being pointless at the same time. It was the scent of seedy taverns and open air, the smell of the road, nights wondering why he was with these people even though he couldn't bring himself to leave. Maybe that was why Mugen had been so turned on by Michiko, because she'd had the scent of Jin all over her.

For you see, Mugen sometimes had those little flashes of insight even though he couldn't express them with words.

And, well, he still had a boner and Jin was starting to shift under him, the bastard, and Mugen was really glad to see him and he was all high from fighting and fucking and he hardly knew what he was doing when he licked the side of Jin's neck.

Jin shuddered a bit and arched his back. 

"Residual battle lust?" he asked. His breathing was a little off, and his voice cracked.

"I ain't even going to try and explain it," Mugen grated out and Jin was glad because he, too, couldn't quite explain or pin down his feelings here, at least not to love or hate, because his feelings were something beyond the extremes of emotion and yet extreme in and of themselves, all the same. And he started to shove-rub-hump Mugen as assiduously as Mugen was doing to him, conscious only of that hard, huge, itchy knot of tension in his spine and his belly that wanted contact, _this_ contact, a demand strangely more urgent than anything he'd ever felt before.

As for Michiko, she's still gone from the room. She's somewhere downstairs, waking up her friend who owns the tea shop so she can cry on his shoulder about how she could never choose between them. And her friend assures her in a sleepy voice that maybe the one who survives the fight was meant to be with her. Fate, destiny, they discuss heavy things like that. 

And so now we see Michiko's room, sans Michiko, where the fate of love and perhaps the world itself is being decided. Not really. It's just two guys rolling around on the floor and grinding into each other, and they both think it's pretty hot but it's not _quite_ good enough and the only thing they've decided is that hell, they've gone this far. Jin might as well kick off his loose samurai trousers so they can feel skin on skin, at least.

And okay, Jin's decided that he'll kiss that filthy mouth and it tastes vaguely like Michiko but mostly it tastes familiar in another way: like the past, like shared struggles and hidden longings, quiet battles so desperate that life could be lost in a split instant.

And Mugen kissed him back and it turned him on, and he was a bit worried about that. But he knew Jin would never betray him or say anything about this whole fucked-up situation because Jin hardly ever said anything anyway, and at that moment he didn't have to because Mugen knew instinctively that Jin was saying all he needed to with his tongue. 

Jin had his back, just like in a fight, without Mugen's ever having to ask, and _that's fucking friendship, man._

Their cocks ground along each others' muscular stomachs: short angry jabs and the rhythm was off because there was no _think_ at the moment, just _feel_ , and both of them were so tightly strung like this was the moment to get it all out; months of tension and all those unexplainable emotions were packed in their guts and it had to be now. At any moment, the knots would burst and this strangeness would end. It felt urgent like nothing ever did and nothing ever would again, and they both knew this.

Still that itch just got tighter and they should have been hurting each other with the violence of their movements, but nothing could assuage it. Mugen released one of Jin's hands to grab their cocks between them, to get that moment past, and Jin helped, his freed hand half-around his own cock and half-twined with Mugen's fingers, and they were both grunting and tasting the hot wet mouth and smelling the journey that doesn't end. And when their spines untwisted at last and the knots in their bellies burst, it was like hot, sharp freedom.

Their hands and stomachs were already sticky and yet it felt like the climax and that involuntary jerking of muscles would never end; it would go on sharp and hot until it killed them. 

But it didn't. Finally their bodies went limp, all life drained into the other man's fist. After a while Mugen could taste the harsh breaths in Jin's mouth and Jin could feel the pounding of Mugen's heart, thumping through his own breastbone.

But the mad urgency was gone, replaced by relief. Jin was perhaps a little unnerved because he'd never realized he could want that so much. And Mugen was also unnerved because he'd never realized that fighting and fucking could be the same, ecstatic thing.

Only then did Mugen roll off and crawl over to his clothes. He started getting dressed without a word.

Also silent, Jin located his pants and hooked an ankle into the waistband to drag them over the mat. He put them on.

Mugen wasn't silent because he was angry; in fact, for one of those rare moments in his life, he wasn't. He was just weirded out. Whatever had happened had been kinda good in a fucked-up way. But he couldn't articulate that. So he busied himself pulling swords out of the walls, floors and furniture. He hooked his own blade onto his back.

"Yo," he said, and tossed Jin's katana and wakizashi at him. Jin caught them.

"Thank you," Jin said. He stood, and brushed out his robes, and located his sandals because they'd flown off at some point. They were in two different corners of the room. Jin just walked over and picked them up, and felt strangely comfortable in the moment. There wasn't a need for a fight, or real conversation. It just _was_. That was friendship, something he'd missed.

"Huh." Mugen said. He was hesitating by the door.

Jin roused himself. He found he didn't want the _it just was_ to end, yet. "I think we should go somewhere and get a bottle of something very strong," he said.

"Shit, that sounds good. That tavern on the corner?" Mugen said. 

"Yes," Jin said. "Then a bath."

"Yeah," Mugen said. No promises, no threats. Neither of them could say when they'd go their separate ways again, and neither of them cared. They both left the room, and went down the stairs.

And they left behind poor Michiko, probably for good. She'll have to find someone else to decide her destiny, to hate her or love her. But she's drinking laced tea and having a really good conversation about guys with her friend, and she'll probably have no trouble finding someone else, in case you were worried. 

**FINIS**

 


End file.
